Cuban teachers to help fill gap EIGHTEEN NEW Cuban teachers and 21 returning ones will arrive in the island Thursday ahead of next week's start of the new school year to help fill the gap created by the recent exodus of Jamaican teachers for jobs in New York and London. The teachers will be deployed in secondary schools across the island as part of a joint Jamaica/Cuba programme under which both countries are collaborating in areas such as health, education and sports. Under the bilateral agreement, Jamaican students are awarded scholarships to study a wide range of disciplines in Cuba. Cuba has also offered to train Jamaican teachers to teach Spanish. But Dr. Doreen Faulkner, deputy Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, told The Gleaner yesterday that apart from Spanish, the Cuban teachers will also be teaching Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics. Teachers will be deployed mostly in rural schools where the need is greatest, she said. The Government has paid the teachers' return fare, but they will be getting regular salaries like Jamaican teachers, from which they will pay for their own accommodation. Meanwhile, the Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) said it has not received any new resignation from teachers who are leaving Jamaican classrooms to fill overseas teaching posts. Liaison officer Patrick Smith said yesterday that the association will be better able to determine by weekend the extent of the shortfall schools will face. In a broadcast to the nation on Sunday, Education Minister Burchell Whiteman said fewer teachers were likely to leave than previously reported. But newly-elected JTA president Paul Adams said yesterday he does not necessarily agree. "Maybe from the Minister's vantage point, it seems okay to him," he said. "But it's something you have to monitor right through the middle of September. Teachers are not only leaving for abroad, they are moving from the educational system into other areas."
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